Ever since the introduction of programmable computer systems, data has been collected and stored in digital volumes. As computers continually increase in processing power and storage capability, the task of collecting and analyzing data is increasingly becoming an automated function performed by computing machines.
Businesses are increasingly able to record and store critical performance measures, such as inventory levels for individual products, contents of a particular customer's purchase order, sales trends for items over a particular season or other calendar period, experimental result sets, logistics pathways, or delivery and maintenance schedules. Consumers are able to build repositories of digital content, including all forms of media and personal documents, as well as create catalogs for physical items, such as books in a library.
Likewise, through the advent of highly scalable server arrays and more robust broadband infrastructures, many computing tasks have been offset to remote server banks commonly known as “the cloud.” Tasks traditionally performed on isolated terminals are now capable of centralization, allowing one cluster of computer servers to perform the complicated processing, compiling, and data management services once performed on isolated computers and intranets.
The cloud has further allowed the interconnection of multiple computer networks into one cohesive array of electronic devices communicating with one another. As a result, user terminals may now operate as data input devices, transmitting the information received to a centralized storage center. The centrally stored data is then available for further processing and analysis by other remotely located systems or administrators.
The flexibility provided by server based data collection and processing traditionally comes at the expense of simplicity. Often, the only solution is to employ one or more persons with advanced software development skills that can assemble a customized interface for use in collecting, viewing, and maintaining content. For individuals, this solution may be far too expensive. For small businesses, which may not be able to justify having fulltime IT staff, this solution may be equally prohibitive. Contract or short-term help, such as consultants, may be utilized to build appropriate task specific applications or data management system, but long-term supportability may represent hidden costs, especially in situations where the created system is damaged or destroyed, for example, through hardware failure or viral infection. Some companies attempt to provide a solution by hosting a content management system that is accessible using an Internet connection. However, with those types of solutions, content designers may not be permitted to customize or modify their applications and data storage structures as they are not likely given sufficient access to the code project for making such changes. Additionally, many hosted solutions require a company to host their web applications on a specific server, which must generally be paid for on a periodic basis (e.g., monthly). Nonpayment likely disables the server, leaving a content designer without anything to work with.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a simplified computer program product to meet the needs left unfulfilled by the prior art. More specifically, there exists a need for a computer program product to perform the steps of querying a content designer for information sought, organizing the information, and building a questionnaire interface program using a simple interface that allows a questionnaire to be presented to a client user, and allows for responses entered by the client user to be readily validated.